...and because I am preparing to leave next week on a two-week trip, I have turned off the comments option. Internet access will be sporadic, and cleaning up the spam is time-consuming. I'll try to figure out a better solution after I return...

From the keynote speech of Amina Rasul delivered at the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy 8th Annual Conference, George Washington University, Washington DC, on April 27, in 2007 to address the conference them: “Women’s Rights in Muslim Communities and Islam:”

A friend told me that women’s rights in democratizing or democratic Muslim societies are like canaries in a coalmine during the industrial age of the West. If the canaries are safe, so is the coalmine. Thus if women’s rights are strong, so is the society.

...to any anonymous commenters who would have posted in good faith... but we have recently received many pages of spam comments, and although we can delete the comments en masse, the user profiles must be either deleted or blocked one at a time. We're still working on them...

So, effective immediately, Lyssa Strada will accept no more anonymous comments.